South Korean display makers, which once dominated more than 90% of the global market for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels used in smartphones, are now facing growing competition from China’s state-backed BOE and CSOT.
These Chinese firms have been aggressively investing in research and development to dispel the perception that Chinese OLED panels are inferior in quality. Analysts say the technological gap between the two countries has narrowed significantly in the 2020s.
Recently, Chinese display manufacturers have even claimed that their smartphone OLED panels surpass those of Samsung Display, S. Korea’s leading OLED producer, in terms of brightness and thinness.
In response, Samsung Display is preparing to unveil a major technological breakthrough at the world’s largest mobile exhibition, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, in March: a polarizer-free OLED display based on On-Cell Film (OCF) technology.
OLED panels typically suffer from reduced image quality due to light reflection. To counter this, a polarizer—a thin, opaque plastic sheet—is usually applied to the panel to minimize reflections. However, this process causes over a 50% drop in brightness, reducing optical efficiency.
To counter this limitation, Samsung Display set out to eliminate the polarizer entirely and instead use a color filter to enhance color clarity and lower power consumption. In 2021, the company became the first in the industry to commercialize this OCF-based OLED technology under the name “Eco² OLED.”.
The technology replaces the polarizer with a black pixel define layer (BPDL) and a color filter, increasing light transmittance while reducing power consumption and overall thickness. By developing a new panel layering structure to block external reflections, Samsung Display improved light transmittance by 33% and cut power consumption by up to 25%. While the manufacturing process is more complex, the company has leveraged its extensive OLED production expertise to stabilize yields quickly.
Samsung’s OCF-based OLED technology first appeared in the foldable display of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and was crucial in enabling under-panel camera (UPC) technology, which places the camera module beneath the display.
“With improved light transmittance, the display allows more light to reach the camera module, making UPC technology possible,” a Samsung Display official said.
Following Samsung’s introduction of the technology in 2021, Chinese manufacturers began developing similar technologies. However, Samsung Display’s mass production quality is still considered the industry’s best. Its OCF-based OLED panels have been exclusively supplied for high-profile devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Xiaomi Mix Fold 3, Vivo X Fold 2, and Google Pixel Fold.
Samsung Display is also expanding OCF OLED technology into laptops. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in January, Lenovo unveiled the ThinkBook Plus G6 Rollable, featuring Samsung’s OLED display.
